WE in 2012

You’ve seen our house goals, now let me introduce you to our WE goals.  We started making WE goals last year and it was pretty successful.  As usual, some are fun and some are not as fun.  We even carried over couple of goals from last year because we liked them so much.  All these activities are ones we’d do together.

1. Do one seasonal activity a month.  This could mean snowshoeing in the winter, camping in the summer or carving pumpkins in the fall.

2. Do one outdoor activity every month.  I think we managed to get 10 of the 12 months done last year.  We really liked this one and decided to carry it over to 2012.

3.  No eating meals in front of the TV.  We were pretty good about this before but over the last year have been guilty of eating most of our meals on the couch.  No more.  We have a beautiful dinner table and we’re going to use it.  The only exception to this would be popcorn during a movie and eating during TV related events like the Super Bowl.

4.  Visit one new place together.  Last year we went to Guatemala and we both loved it.  It was great exploring somewhere new together.  We don’t know where the new place will be but we’re excited to figure it out.

5.  Go on an spontaneous trip.  When I say spontaneous, I mean go somewhere with less than 1 week advance planning.  If you know me, then you know this is spontaneous for me.

6.  Attend 6 events.  An event could be sports related, a play, a concert or an art opening. 

7.  Focus on Izzy.  Izzy is doing really well.  She’s not as hyper as she used to be.  She learned a lot of tricks last year and now can be left in the house alone without having any accidents or destroying anything.  In general, she’s matured a lot.  There are still a few things we need to work on like not jumping on people when they enter, being better on her leash (we took her off the gentle leader) and not trying to steal things off the kitchen counters.  She better at the last one but she could still use a little self control.  We want to focus on her this year.  Teach her some more manners and few more tricks.  We also want her get comfortable at the dog park again.  She had a few incidents last summer (the victim of unprovoked attacks) that leaves her a little on edge when there is more than 2 dogs in a space.

8.  Security funds.  We do a pretty good job of saving money but we’d like to have 6 months savings that would cover essential expenses by the end of the year.

9.  Come up with a retirement plan for Micah.  I have some great retirement benefits with my employer like 401k matching and an automatic retirement plan.  I also have an IRA Roth.  Micah’s employer doesn’t do matching or provide any type of retirement benefit they contribute to.  He’s contributes a small amount to his 401k every month but not as much as he should.  We need to sit down and come up with a plan that will set him up for retirement.

10.  Work on the blog.  We both need to blog more and we have so many updates we keep meaning to make.  I’m hoping to devote some time every month just for maintenance. 

11.  Take on a project together.  This year our big project was smoking salmon and giving them away as Christmas gifts to friends and family.  It was a fun, non-house related project.  We need to do more of that.

12.  The Sunday Supper Cuisine Challenge.  This might be my favorite of all the goals this year.  As most of you know, we do themed Thanksgivings.  We pick a cuisine and use it to guide our Thanksgiving menu.  We decided to take it one step further and have themed Sunday Suppers.  Every month we’d pick a cuisine that would inspire our weekly big Sunday meal.  I’m really excited about this. 

Something like this:

January/February – ?

March –Moroccan

April –Japanese*

May – West African

June – French*

July – Greek

July – Californian inspired

September – Spanish*

October – Filipino*

November – Sri-Lankan*

December – Thai or Malaysian

I’m not committed to the month/cuisine combination.  I just sort of listed them.  Then only thing I am committed to is the cuisines that are starred.  I’d love recommendations of cuisines you’d add to the list and/or recipes from a specific cuisine.  I left out Italian or Mexican because we have those a lot.  I would definitely add a regional cuisine from one of those countries if people had some yummy recipe suggestions.